ARCTOS Days 2016
Also this year the annual meeting ARCTOS Days took place on beautiful Sommarøy on April 5-6. More then 30 ARCTOS students and members attended the meeting. The program was full of interesting presentations, ranging from master projects on the food-web structure in Kongsfjord, over PhD projects dealing with seagrass and meroplankton, to post-doctoral research on the use of acoustics and a professorial perspective on sea ice biota.
At the first day ARCTOS leader Jørgen Berge gave a short summary of what has happened within the ARCTOS network since the last ARCTOS Days. The Centre of Excellence (SFF) proposal got into the second round, the ARCTOS PhD school funding ran out in 2015 after ten years but the faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics at UiT agreed to continue funding for three more years, until the end of 2018, and several new projects started.
Stig Falk-Petersen gave a short overview of the new format Arctic Frontiers Young, which is the umbrella for all activities during the Arctic Frontiers conference aimed at pupils, students and early career scientists such as PhD candidates and post-doctoral researchers. The activities of 2016 included the Arctic Frontiers PhD workshop, Science for Schools, Science for Politics, the Arctic Student Forum, Emerging Leaders, an Arctic Career Seminar and a Science Communications Panel.
At the second day, after a nice evening with a cozy dinner and steaming hot Jacuzzi, several new or planned ARCTOS projects were presented. Jørgen Berge presented ArcticABCD, which is an infrastucture project connected to ArcticABC, and the SFF proposal for a Centre of Excellence called ‘New Arctic – Centre for ecosystem studies in the new Arctic Ocean’. Paul Wassmann informed about the funding the Arctic Marine System Ecology group at UiT received in order to become world-leading in Arctic Seasonal Ice Zone Ecology (Arctic SIZE), Kjetil Sagerup presented the project ‘CoArc – A transatlantic innovation arena for sustainable development in the Arctic’, and Jannike Falk-Andersson informed about MARP3 – MARine Plastic Pollution in the Arctic: origin, status, costs, and incentives for Prevention.
All in all a very informative meeting with good discussions and nice socializing.